


Of Woven Wisps

by Haverice



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: AU, Fae & Fairies, M/M, Murder mystery with cliché elements, No underage, Not a Doctor Who reference, Spark Stiles
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-13
Updated: 2020-09-13
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:06:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26434636
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Haverice/pseuds/Haverice
Summary: By the time the dispatcher hails the ambulance, triangulates his location, and directs them here, his friend is already dead.
Relationships: Peter Hale/Stiles Stilinski
Comments: 6
Kudos: 25





	Of Woven Wisps

By the time the dispatcher hails the ambulance, triangulates his location, and directs them here, his friend is already dead.

No one else can see her, though, not her body, not her gold-tinged blood, or her red eyes, disintegrating to ash along with the rest of her.

They can’t see her, they see Stiles, and because many of them know his father, and more importantly his _mother,_ Stiles is squirming in the waiting room to see a pediatric psychiatrist not one week later.

”Stilinski?” the nurse calls through the open door of the office.

Dad ushers him up, hands gentle and eyes terribly worried even though Stiles is old enough to tell when he tries to hide it.

“Does he...will he need a scan? I can pay,” his dad says once Stiles has mumbled through his story and the pretty doctor with the bland smile has stopped smiling. She swivels on her little stool, depresses the lever that makes her sink several inches and faces the computer to type and type and type some more.

”You have wonderful insurance, Deputy,” she assures, which neither affirms or assuages his father’s fears. “And yes, I’d like to order him a CT, maybe an MRI depending on the results but that can wait.”

She turns to Stiles and tells him he’ll have to lie still for a little while and asks him if he can be brave and he pouts at her, affronted. She chuckles, which makes him relax. Her smile is weird, but she feels a lot like his friend did before...before. She feels heavy, like the air before a storm, and a bit murky, like he’s seeing her through sheets of rain. It’s calming.

Dad, though, doesn’t look calmed and frets without looking like he’s fretting, all tense shoulders and thinned lips and the way his fingers tighten over Stiles’ knee before he hastily peels it apart.

Stiles looks at him worriedly.

Dr. Ingrid Preele follows his gaze and she blinks twice like she’s waking up from a fog. She looks at Stiles, looks at the wall, appearing thoughtful. And finally she looks at his dad. “There are a lot of factors at play when it comes to the human brain, Deputy. Even in childhood. I am not going to undermine your and Stiles’ concerns, but I’d like you to be aware that this could all be a normal part of his development.”

Dad stammers out briefly about Mom, about her diagnosis, and Dr. Preele soothes him with the imaging appointment and some things about risk and genes and screenings. Things Stiles promises himself to look up in the encyclopedia once they get home.

There is more discussion, symptoms and red flags, and then they’re being guided back to the reception. A plump Asian man smiles kindly through the glass.

Dad pulls out his wallet but Stiles doesn’t see because the doctor is on her knees now, crouched in front of him to squeeze his hands and tell him to be brave.

”Things might seem a little strange now, Stiles. But with any luck, this will all be just a bad memory.”

By the time he and his dad slip out the door, he hasn’t managed to ask her why for a moment there her words tasted like spun sugar. The sugar of lies.

-

The season is spring. Stiles is in the yard, lying on his back, staring at the blue sky, as he thinks of everything that’s gone wrong.

The world is very different, compared to how it used to be. Less color, less life. It feels like a layer of everything has been shaved off, or at least hidden behind something he cannot see through. It’s a novel feeling, a terrible feeling, and it all started after the follow-up appointment he had with The Doctor.

He doesn’t call her by her name anymore. He can’t. He would like to, or maybe he doesn’t, because he has very strong feelings for her now, none of them nice. Still, he would have liked the option to, if he wanted, but he quite literally can’t.

He doesn’t remember, not her _real_ one. He’s sure from the niggle of his gut that it wasn’t something as alliterate as Daisy Dawes. But everyone calls her that — “ _Dr. Dawes,” —_ and Stiles stopped arguing with his father when he started looking haunted again.

So he calls her The Doctor, and strongly dislikes The Doctor, but that isn’t what’s important.

“Stiles? Baby, why are you on the ground?” Dad says, sitting down on a grassy patch right next to him.

”I’m trying to smell the clouds.”

”You mean see the clouds?”

”Mhmm,” he says, even though he means smell not see.

Dad is off duty, a symptom that’s been popping up more often as of late, and Stiles rolls until his head is pillowed on Dad’s leg, immediately feeling better. Safe. Despite how the grass no longer sings as it used to.

Dad cards a hand into his hair and hums until he falls asleep and until he awakes, he forgets all about the missing smells and singing.

He wakes thinking he’s dreamed about what he’s lost but he cannot remember.

-

“Dad?”

”Yeah, buddy?” Dad says, sounding a bit harried as he tries to juggle three full pans and the oven which burped a trail of black smoke a while back.

”Do you want some help?”

Dad sort of goes limp, just for a second, before he fetches a plastic bag to fasten over the fire alarm, turns all the settings to off and lets loose the smoking oven. He rushes to open the door and two windows but Stiles’ eyes are already stinging.

He coughs, nose running, and Dad whirls around to shoo him to the living room.

”Stay here until the smoke clears okay, kiddo?”

”Okay, but—“ and Dad is gone, a quilt clutched in his hand though not the one Mom stitched for him when Stiles was two. His face looked like he was going to war and from the living room Stiles can hear sounds of vigorous flapping.

Unwilling to bother Dad and his self-appointed battle against kitchen appliances, Stiles trots to his room upstairs. The window is open, like he left it, and the person outside of it is still there as well but hasn’t entered.

“Thank you for waiting,” Stiles says, and feels moved enough to add, “and for your manners.”

The person outside still looks like a he more than a she, but Stiles is hesitant to say for sure because the he is wearing a smock that may have been meant for a she and he looks like he wouldn’t give two pennies if Stiles is curious.

”Are you a they?” he asks, the words tumbling from his mouth before he can stop them.

The person blinks and looks at the branch the person is standing on and then looks back at Stiles, head shaking from side to side. The head shake shifts to a nod when Stiles asks if he’s a he and the corner of his lips twitches up when he asks if his smock was made for a she before going flat again.

He thrusts the poster in his hand back at Stiles, the poster with a brilliant, hand-painted rendition of a gorgeous young woman with her hair in braids and red eyes.

”I tried to talk to my dad but he’s a bit busy right now,” Stiles says. “Do you want me to call the station?”

He, whose name Stiles should really obtain to stop calling them _he_ or _the person,_ looks briefly frustrated, shaking his head. The coins in his hair tinkle and he thrusts the poster out again.

Stiles wishes they could communicate beyond posters and head shakes and thrusts but when they last tried all Stiles could hear were the usual yaps of Mr. Douglas’ chihuahua from next door.

“Try this,” he says, handing him a pencil and a wide-ruled page from his composition book.

The scribbled script he receives in turn is deeply set, so deeply that it sinks through the paper entirely and disappears from view. “Um.”

The person looks unsurprised when Stiles shows him the blank page before he takes the pencil to it one more time.

When Stiles is passed the paper and pencil a second time, he is relieved to find that he can read it, and that the letters stay put, though he notes with interest that they are all capitalized, like the person learned one version and one version only of the English alphabet.

_F I ND,_ he reads, and the person thrusts out his poster for emphasis.

“I’m going to call the station,” he says. “To file a missing person’s,” he adds when the person frowns, distrust in their gaze.

Stiles is close to giving up. “I don’t know what you want from me.”

The person’s frown morphs into a scowl. He looks like he ate something very sour and plucks a leaf from Stiles’ tree and crushes it in his fist and hurls it to the grass and looks appeased.

“...You are very strange,” Stiles says. “You’re like The Doctor.”

And the person looks befuddled so Stiles finds him the contact card for Dr. Not-Dawes and says, “I’ll be right back.”

When Stiles returns with his father finally in tow, the branch is empty, the sill has crumpled leaves, and Dad looks worried.

Stiles throws hands.

-

The Doctor turns up dead the next evening.


End file.
